Virus virus everywhere
Not a single patient to be found

We deserve sounding boards of truth,
Not sponges of deception.

My head is full of lies, equivocations and beguiling stories.
Who can I trust?
The poor?
The limb-lost warrior?
Residents in Cell Block A through Z?
Patients found out but can't breathe.

We must be sound,
And let the voices of truth echo.

My new windows are transparent,
Free from smudge and tarnish.
I was clear-eyed gazing out,
Reflective peering in.
Two-sided.
Finger prints have been wiped free,
But around the edges there are still ridges,
Evidence of being opened and closed,
Unbroken in their sturdy frames.

But time is no friend to glass.
Winds assail it, birds bounce off at break-neck speed,
Dust accumulates, it becomes opaque.
Missiles assault its permanence,
Shattering the pane into foreboding shards, like a shell.

Some desperate glazes never get replaced,
They invite stone-throwers.
Then the building becomes derelict, untenable.

One stone can break a window,
Or fell a giant.

There will be two epiphanies
On January 6th.
Christians around the globe will celebrate
Little Christmas, The Epiphany,
The Word Made Flesh,
The arrival of the three wise men, The Magi,
And they reveal to the world
The Savior has come.
The same will happen on the Senate Floor (sans three wise men)
When the President-Savior
Is presented to the world,
And his detractors will bray, cackle and neigh
As he is adorned.
Saviors don't build walls,
They raze them.

I know I'm not alone
Knowing readers like good-feely poems;
Not poems on politics,
But on love and gnomes,
That offer happiness to you at home.
I'll forgo writing verses on death,
My lovely images will ****** your breath.
I'll ink lines about an old flame's door,
The hesitation to knock once more,
To see if she, like me, is free,
And re-ignite the flickering light
That rained down from our starry night.

People want to feel good more,
So I won't write about Civil War;
Or Armageddon on the horizon;
Millions dead with a final solution;
A leader devoid of absolution
For lies without resolutions:
For a sin that should not be.

I'll write about aging well,
Finding water in a dried out well,
Overcoming not feeling well,
Lifting a grandson with Well, well, well!

These be poems that one reads well.

I heard there's a shot today.

There's good reason to forget infant memory.
Too many colours, sounds, and faces back then.
My upsets were soothed with a soft hand and a healing kiss.
It wouldn't be fair to compare,
I would feel weak to compete
With those faded images and feelings.
It's bad enough with my adult recall,
Stories and pictures that bring on palpitations, clamminess and racing.
My school is an empty lot, beside an empty rectory, and an empty church.
My childhood avenue is derelict, like Mockingbird Lane.
My Triumph Herald is still baby blue in some photo.
With each memory, I feel the nausea.
Look at this one. All ten of us.
Five still.
I'm already beginning to feel queasy.
If I were five still, I'd forget.

While jogging on the flyover
The orange dressed Sun
Looked at me،
Played hide and seek

And the trees kept like parents
To their child
Kept
holding it
On their shoulders

I said hi
Through my smile

The 🍊 orange moon
                   Hung from the green rope

The leaves
                   Wore yellow dresses

We
Are
Here
To breathe

No tragedy can choke us

It's enough to claim our existence

I was sound asleep. Work tomorrow

Tuesday, December 9, 1980. 6:30 A.M.

Alarm on. Out and into shower.
Shave. Can't hear radio.
Getting dressed, and in the background's playing, Imagine.
Then Wheels, Beautiful Boy, Help, I Should Have Known Better.
Why?
And the news sinks in. And I have to go teach Grade 6 English
and read Curious ******* George to four classes of Kindergartens and Grade ones.
And, I'm alone in my new house, in a small town called Aylmer (population 5,000).
My wife is away during the week at University, and I hate my job,
and he's decaying on some slab as I read to twenty-five five year olds. Some of these kids will get to know and love his work. So will their kids and grandkids. I know. Like Mozart.

Tuesday, December 9, 1980. 10:00 P.M.

Me, Johnny Walker, and the turntable going round and round, like his wheels.

It was forty years ago today,
In New York where he longed to stay;
At the doors to his apartment rise,
With devil's envy rising in his eyes;
He imagined his confusion wasn't wrong;
Then the curtain in the tower tore,
The Cavern shook beneath its floor,
And the needle scratched across our songs.

I want to let him rest in peace,
Still waiting at the end of his road.

The assassin doesn't seek release,
And it doesn't really matter Bro.
For John is dead, and
And we're a bit lonelier now.